Given that this community has generally positive view of Stalin, I’m curious what he did that my comrades find irredeemable or out of line. Since it’s easy to criticize the Soviet Union from a western perspective, bonus points if you explain how this was detrimental to the development of socialism and/or communism.
The deportations were a massive L. I get why there were done and it’s not like it was an intentional genocide (or a genocide in general for that matter) but it’s still horrible that it mostly hit those who did nothing wrong. Collective punishment isn’t great. But I can understand why it happened as an extreme reaction to an extreme event.